Black Lives Can't Be Bothered - Protest Against Williams College Safety and Security Fizzles Out

WILLIAMS COLLEGE, MA - In one of the more humorous stories in this week's Williams Record is a brief article which describes how the previously all consuming effort to restrain and investigate the supposedly racist Williams College Campus Safety and Security (CSS) department has evaporated like steam on a dry sunny day.

Laughably, only five participants showed up at a recent listening event regarding the CSS. According to the Williams Record staff reporter, Lucy Walker, the meeting was stacked with pro-CSS students, most of them had come in order to listen to those with differing opinions. In fact, one of the major takeaways from the pro-CSS student's comments was their "...frustration with what they perceived to be the tendency of debates on campus to be one-sided. The majority of the participants had come hoping to change that culture and provide an opposing perspective."

The pro-CSS students asserted the CSS cared about the student body and was just trying to do its job. “I’ve worked with them for three years now. I think what some students don’t understand is that their only concern is the safety and well-being of the students,” said Nick Landry ’21. “They have people who work there who are retired and come in part-time because they genuinely enjoy doing what they do.”

This was pathetic denouement for a cause which black students on campus had tightly embraced, seeking to establish hatred for the Williams College CSS on par with what outside activists had ginned up through the Black Lives Matter movement.

For example, Isaiah Blake ’21 described the POC community as a “magnet” for CSS, at a Black Student Town Hall event in November 2018.

Blake, as you may recall, was the high-visibility CARE Now student leader who this year became frustrated at a CC meeting because of the rules and regulations which he perceived slowed down the fulfillment of a simple request which he artfully described as: "To have niggers sit in the fucking quad and eat hot dogs."

In a pale imitation of the Black Lives Matter protests, black students complained that they felt "unsafe" around CSS officers. According to an earlier report in the Williams Record, "Some examples of alarming behavior that attendees gave included POC-organized parties, where room capacity was arbitrarily and significantly lowered on more than one occasion, as well as examples of condescending and rude tones some CSS officers have taken with POC."

The listening event was part of a larger effort to solicit student opinions regarding CSS which was conducted by Margolis Healy, a campus security consulting firm, hired to conduct an external review process of the College’s campus safety and security (CSS).

On student, Eli Cytrynbaum ’20, a member of Minority Coalition’s (MinCo) steering board, explained away the failure of anti-CSS students to gin up much support this year for their cause as due to the fact that "...people are very tired from last year and have issues from their home communities to deal with,” he said.

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is an award-winning political scientist and a former Williams College professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.

 

Accountability for Thee, But Not for Me: Williams Record Admonishes Williams College Council

WILLIAMSTOWN, MA - In the Williams Record today, we can find a nifty opinion piece where the unnamed authors ignore the vicious, bigoted abuse of white students on the College Council, while demanding new standards for elected student leaders that the Williams Record would never live up to itself. How charmingly New England...

1. Transparency

For example, there is now a demand for greater accountability from the CC, particularly a call to stop the abuse of power we saw last semester when student representatives took the cowardly approach of discriminating against a Jewish student organization, Williams Initiative for Israel (WIFI), by failing to reveal their vote records. This way student representatives managed to bring negative national/international attention to their decision in a manner which shielded them from appropriate individual consequences.

Pro Tip: The Williams Record should also also list its editorial board members and how they vote on each collective opinion. The current practice of saying that an editorial opinion was the product of a majority of the board members is a subterfuge designed to give each member of the board the opportunity to plausibly deny they supported any particular editorial position. 

2. Diversity and Equality

The major news from last semester was not the process of approving funding for Black Previews. It was the outright, hateful, bigot tirade that two CARE Now black activist students directed again white male students on the College Council at the April 9, 2019 meeting. Watch the video (the shouting begins at 45:00).

The verbal attack on the young white men was so intense that it brought some of them to tears. This display of emotion only emboldened the verbally abusive students. Seyi Olaose '21 used these tears to further the white student's humiliation.

Seyi Olaose: This is white liberal s***.

Isaiah Blake: This is the s***, the tears…

Seyi Olaose: Because nobody wants to talk. Because you had a lot of questions. You had a lot of questions. And I’ve had classes with you. I know what kind of d***heads you are. I’ve had political science with you. It’s s*** that opens up all a yo white moderate f***ing liberal bullshit. I know the type of person you are. So what do you want to say?

The Williams Record conveniently forgets its responsibility to preserve a healthy learning environment for white male students on campus, students who should have never been verbally abused in this manner.

Pro Tip: The Williams Record should start printing up anonymous comments from white students who wish to complain about the way their are being mistreated by members of the administration, faculty and student body. Failing to protect white male students is clearly racism by any definition. 

3. Communication

The Williams Record insists The CC site should be updated more frequently to reflect weekly developments. Meanwhile, the paper only reports once a week and censors comments from those it disagrees with including outside political activists.

Pro Tip: The Williams Record should permit its opponents to register their objections to their news articles. This way full communication might be restored...especially for ex-faculty and ex-students who have been harmed by the leftwing bias of the campus.

4. FinCom Reform

The Record wants the student body to elect the members of the committee that approves requests for funding. I assume this is because the FinCom is dominated by white guys. The Record probably thinks fiscally responsible, white men would be less likely to make those decisions if they were subject to direct election. 

Pro Tip: Likewise, the Williams Record should open up the deliberations of its editorial board. In fact, the members of the board should be directly elected by the students. The editorial board should be expected to behave in a manner more consistent with its own seemingly Maoist ideology. 

5. Acknowledging Mistakes and Revising Policy

The Williams Record asks the CC to correct some of its "mistakes" while ignoring the most glaring, alarming mistakes which caught national attention. There is no suggestion that the CC should properly and accurately record its minutes, enlist a Sargent-at-Arms to police their meetings, or follow its own bylaws for the achievement of a quorum. The CC meetings I watched last semester were poorly led, poorly policed, and conducted with little attention to the CC's own, written rules and regulations. This is an affront to anyone with a sincere interest in democratic governance. It also opens up members of the CC to public ridicule for their fecklessness and inexperience with obvious political norms. 

Pro Tip: The Williams Record should follow its own procedures and immediately do everything in its power to make the campus more hospitable for white male students, Republicans, Jews, and conservatives. This means appointing conservative columnists, developing positive stories about the white race and its cultural achievements, protecting pro-Israel students from physical threats and verbal abuse, and providing opportunities for conservative students, faculty and alumni to add their opinions and recommendations in a fair and balanced manner within each article. 

The most significant question on campus is whether or not the Williams Record has the guts needed to apply the standards it expects of the CC to itself. Does it, in the end, do the right thing or not? 

John C. Drew, Ph.D. is a former Williams College political science professor. He is an occasional contributor at American Thinker, Breitbart, Front Page, PJMedia and WND.